A View of Lake Charles

No, it’s not a painting, although it certainly looks like something out of the Impressionist School. It’s a photograph of the lake, with the water reflecting the skies above.

I’ve forgotten where I found this and who took the photo. However, it looks beautiful, but according to Wiki, the lake looks nothing like that in real time:

Lake Charles is a brackish lake located on the Calcasieu River in Southwest Louisiana, United States, just behind the western tier of the City of Lake Charles’ city limits. The water is a dark greenish-brown. There is a thick layer of sediment at the bottom of the lake.

In other words, it can be more swamp than clear lake water. Yet people swim, play and boat in its waters. And blow a wad of money in its nearby casinos.

Wiki also reports an unsubstantiated observation that Lake Charles’ muddy waters also may attract suicides.

I’ve never been to the lake or the same-named city, yet one of my characters in my novel set in the early 1900s, the Reverend Hixon, hails from Lake Charles. As the lake and the city are near the Texas border, I have his father, a Louisiana slave, and others being driven temporarily into the state to avoid Union soldiers. When they are apprehended and told that they are free, his father returns to Louisiana and settles in Lake Charles.